Threats in Published Adventures

Parent page Unexpected Difficulty

When you reach an encounter in a published adventure, it will give you an indication of the expected party level and what threat the encounter is for that level of party, such as “moderate 3” for an encounter that’s a moderate threat to a 3rd-level party. If your party reaches the encounter at a different level, you could recalculate the XP for each enemy individually, or you can estimate the threat posed by adjusting a step down or up per level difference. For example, the moderate 3 encounter would be severe 2, extreme 1, low 4, or trivial 5. If you still think the group can take it on as-is, you can use that estimation for determining XP, maybe giving a little extra if it ended up being tougher than you expected.